Topic: Episode 294: Something in Common

[Pandareus]

The boys are back in town with some final thoughts on E3 2012. Final until the next episode, that is.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/rfn/30769

It's so very good to be home. Guillaume and Jonny are back from E3 to rejoin Jon and James, who kicked ass on the Home Team along with many other stellar NWR staff members. After a week of obsessive reporting on Nintendo and E3, you'd think we would be sick of it all. Instead, we had to carefully watch the clock to make sure we didn't record too much for GUI to handle this weekend!

We ease into the E3 talk with a weird prologue of Disaster: Day of Crisis and Pandora's Tower, courtesy of James. Then our resident FPS fan, Mr. Lindemann, muses on the possibilities for Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 (and the Elite service) on Wii U. Guillaume shares his positive impressions of Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion for 3DS and New Super Mario Bros U. Jonny had a few games in mind for this segment, but a segue into New Super Mario Bros 2 (the 3DS one...) derails the rest of the segment as we collectively inquire why this game exists and how it could turn out to be a good thing.

Right before the Now Playing segment, you can listen to interviews about Cloudberry Kingdom, The Last Story, the Zelda: Symphony of the Goddesses tour and Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion. Each in their own chapter for your convenience!

But the inquiries don't stop there! Listener Mail offers an amusingly lop-sided pair of letters. The first is a simple list of over a dozen quick-fire E3 questions, mostly focused on the Wii U controllers and other non-software topics. The other is a very short, simple inquiry about how Nintendo uses this annual showcase, and naturally, that's the one that sends us into an astonishing tirade on Nintendo's overall performance at E3 and how it may or may not affect the eventual fate of their new console and its already-forgotten handheld cousin. We'll cover more emails very soon, and yours could be one of them! Just use this handy web form.

Other things mentioned on the episode that you should investigate: the NWR Exclusives channel on YouTube; that Hip Tanaka music podcast with Jonny and TYP; the RFN/Connectivity t-shirt store; and the RetroActive nomination thread in our forums.

[Pixelated Pixies]

I have to agree with Mr Metts. I too have taken issue with the 3DS touch screen. I'm glad to hear that the Wii U screen is somewhat better, but also a little dissappointed that it still has some responsiveness issues. A capacitive screen would have been really cool.

[Shaymin]

Heads up: If you got an episode that was sub-2 hours from iTunes, it's the wrong one. Delete it and do a hard pull from the feed (Shift+click) to get the one that's 2:21:52

[TJ Spyke]

That worked Shaymin, though it also brought back every RFN I have listed to and deleted (going back to episode 140) and for every other podcast I have.

[abe]

the best version of Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 should be the WiiU version!?!? c'mon all of you know, the game will be developed for the 360 and then ported over to Ps3, WiiU and even Wii

ps. this comment system sucks but your podcast ROCKS!!!!

[BlueStorm]

I deleted the one episode from iTunes, and then went to the iTunes store looked it up and re downloaded the single episode. i.e. the button marked "FREE".


Quirky.

[NWR_Lindy]

@abe Theoretically the Wii version of BO2 should be the best as it's on the newest hardware of the three consoles. I agree though, it will most certainly be developed with 360 in mind and everything else second.

[Plugabugz]

James is batman.

[Soren]

The only way any Call of Duty game becomes "the best" on WiiU is if it scores first dibs on DLC like Xbox has right now.

[broodwars]

The only way any Call of Duty games becomes "the best" on WiiU is if it scores first dibs on DLC like Xbox has right now.

Which Nintendo won't do because they've already announced they "won't get in a bidding war" with other companies over 3rd party exclusivity.  So yeah, Microsoft probably has Call of Duty sewn up in perpetuity, at least until Activision inevitably kills it with all these annual releases.

[NWR_Lindy]

Ah yes, I forgot about the DLC exclusivity.  Yeah, Xbox pretty much owns Call of Duty nowadays.  Typically CoD games sell about 8.5 million on Xbox vs. 5.5 million on PS3, so the inertia with that series is definitely on 360.  Wii U isn't going to affect that in the slightest.  You might see more Wii U owners buying into the series than in previous generations, though.

[Hey Einstein!]

CODBLOPS2 = yawn.


On a different subject, did anybody here listen to the Hip Tanaka Discover Music Project podcast with TYP?
It was the first time that I've crossed over to that show and I really recommend it, the last 2 songs alone make it worth a listen.


I was playing a frantic game of Mario Tennis Open whilst listening to the Silver Surfer NES music (not Tanaka before anybody says - just  listen to the show) and it was a perfect fit.


Just one complaint, my favourite piece of video game music was missed out: The Gameboy Tetris high score entry theme. Along with Mario Land I sincerely believe these are the best two rewards I've ever had for finishing a game/playing well.


What about you?

[Lithium]

CODBLOPS2 = yawn.


On a different subject, did anybody here listen to the Hip Tanaka Discover Music Project podcast with TYP?
It was the first time that I've crossed over to that show and I really recommend it, the last 2 songs alone make it worth a listen.

yeah it was a really good ep. I would love an NWR spin off of DMP focusing on videogame music like on that episode, but i doubt it would be feasable considering TYP already hosts radio trivia and seems busy enough that they get released intermittently.

[Shaymin]

Everyone's concerned that there's an overload of Mario and they're not pushing Metroid/Zelda as part of the "big 3". Except for Nintendo, the big 3 isn't Mario/Zelda/Metroid anymore - it's Mario/Pokemon/casual, based on recent sales numbers.

And since Nintendo lost money last year, they're banking on 2 of each (Wii FitU, Nintendoland, Black 2/White 2, and the two New Super Mario games) to provide a good sales boost this year and a consistent 40-50k/month for the next couple of years. Remember last July's NPDs, when NSMB DS randomly showed up in the top 10?

Also, if there's another New Super Mario Brothers for either WiiU or 3DS, and it's not radically different than the ones coming out this year, I'll eat my hat and send the picture to Guillaume for chapter art.

[NWR_Lindy]

I never considered Metroid to be part of the Nintendo "Big Three".  It has always been the redheaded stepchild of their big franchises; they've never really known what to do with it, or how to market it.

[broodwars]

I never considered Metroid to be part of the Nintendo "Big Three".  It has always been the redheaded stepchild of their big franchises; they've never really known what to do with it, or how to market it.

I'd argue that they knew what to do with it, and how to market it when it came to the Metroid Prime games, and I believe Zero Mission as well on the GBA.  Prime 1 was an extremely successful game, especially considering it was on the GameCube.  I believe Primes 2 and 3 sold fairly well as well.  Unfortunately, Nintendo doesn't know how to market that franchise to the Japanese, resulting in Metroid Other M being developed to match their cultural sensibilities (and not selling to expectations just about anywhere in the world).

[NWR_Lindy]

True, but even with Metroid Prime 2 they started to have an identity crisis by adding in the ho-hum multiplayer (because it wasn't good enough for it be simply a first-person adventure game).  I don't recall Metroid Prime 3 being marketed particularly well, either.

[NWR_insanolord]

I have no idea how anyone could be at all impressed by New Super Mario Bros. U. I had more fun with literally every other game in Nintendo's booth. It brought nothing new to the table other than the tablet stuff, which sucked in comparison to the same style of implementation in Rayman Legends. The Coin Rush stuff in NSMB2 at least has the potential to be interesting; I saw no such glimmer of hope in the Wii U game.

[Sundoulos]

I have to agree with Lindy on the subject of Metroid's advertsing, particularly with Metroid Prime 3. 


As I recall, one of the complaints that I kept hearing was that Nintendo was barely making any mention of Metroid at all in their announcements or advertisements in the months leading up to Corruption's release.  It was almost as if they were relying on Metroid's existing fanbase to buy the game, but they never really expected it do very well.   Corruption appears to have performed a little better than Echoes, but I think that the original Prime sold almost twice as many games as Echoes and Prime put together.  The biggest decline in sales appears to have been in the NA market.

Unfortunately, when Nintendo did decide to Market Metroid Prime Corruption, it was during the the era of the "Wii would like to play" guys,  where it was readily apparent that  NOA's marketing department was collectively taking heavy doses of hallucinogenic drugs.  That weird airport commercial displayed some aspects of the game, but mainly focused on what you could do with the Wiimote.  There was no context to explain what Metroid was or why it should have been interesting.

Contrast that with the Metroid Prime 1 commerical, which at least did a fairly excellent job of telling you what you were getting into:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewcljvJQAQA


I won't bother embedding the Metroid Prime Echoes commercial, but it was worse than Corruption's, since it barely showed the game at all.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-O7fsmPGmVM

For a more egregious example of the same sin, you should check out the Canadian commercial:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVCuUkf-SO0

[Lithium]

man i loved the original metroid prime commercial even though generally speaking nintendo has no clue what its doing in terms of marketing. The early wii era was a weird exception to that though despite that they infamously botched the metroid prime 3 commercial but the casual gamers were never going to buy that game anyways.